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Network Performance Comparison

Akamai's route optimization technology improves the performance and reliability of dynamic web applications and content delivered over the Internet. Akamai leverages several other techniques to improve web application performance over the Internet, such as connection and protocol optimizations, site caching, compression and prefetching.

Network Performance Comparison

Methodology

Akamai's dynamic mapping system serves as a weather map for not only the entire Akamai network, but also the Public Internet.

Akamai collects enormous amounts of data on Internet performance. Two of these sources are from "ping" and "traceroute", common utilities that provide information on latency, packet loss, and routing. Akamai uses this information, along with it’s sophisticated algorithms and global deployment, to optimally route traffic between Akamai data centers on the public Internet.

Between any two data points, we consider millions of possible routes through Akamai data centers as intermediaries and choose the best performing one at any time.

For the map of the world diagram, we determine the Public Internet path by running traceroute between the selected end points. We feed the IP addresses of each hop into our Edgescape IP intelligence database to obtain city names, and longitude/latitude information.

The Akamai path is chosen by our proprietary routing algorithms. These algorithms combine latency and loss into a "usability" score and determine the optimal path. We feed locations of the Akamai routes chosen to Edgescape to again obtain city names, and longitude/latitude information. We indicate the path chosen for Akamai and the Public Internet during peak latency and loss for the selected date range. All graphs display data for a one week window.

At times the Public Internet may display better (lower) loss or latency metrics than Akamai. This is expected as as we are constantly striving to achieve a balance between latency and loss to deliver optimal usability. For example, Akamai may choose a path with .2% loss if we can reduce latency by 100ms. This tradeoff is determined by proprietary scoring functions that are used within our dynamic mapping system.

This graphic shows the optimized Akamai path between the selected end points correspondsding to the 99th percentile of latency over the given time periods, and likewise for the Internet path. The latency and packet loss scores are the respective 99th percentile.

The city and network of intermediate hops on the Akamai path are displayed if the cursor is placed over the dots on the Akamai path. The Internet path is shown as a blue line between the two end points and does not reflect the actual Internet traceroute. Each red cross corresponds to 1% packet loss.

Legend

Public Internet Path

Akamai Path

Peak Route Optimization

Route Optimization

Latency is the round trip time in milliseconds that it takes a packet to travel between its source host and destination host. High latency adversely impacts the application response times experienced by end users. The 'Peak Diffential in Latency' is the difference between the latency on the Public Internet path and that on the Akamai path at the point in time of which this difference is greatest. The 'Peak Improvement in Latency' is the Peak Differential Latency divided by the latency on the Akamai path at that point in time.

Packet loss indicates the percent of packets that fail to reach their destination. High packet loss limits the throughput of many types of connections, such as TCP, thereby increasing application response times. The 'Peak Differential in Packet Loss' is the difference between the packet loss on the Public Internet path and that on the Akamai path at the point in time at which the difference is greatest.

'Quality' is a measure of the connection quality determined by taking latency and packet loss into account. The range of possible quality sores is 0 to 100, where 100 is the best possible quality. It is an approximation of the end-user experience. The 'Peak Differential in Quality' is the difference between the quality on the Public Internet and that on the Akamai path at the point in time at which this difference is greatest.

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Akamai secures and delivers digital experiences for the world’s largest companies. Akamai’s intelligent edge platform surrounds everything, from the enterprise to the cloud, so customers and their businesses can be fast, smart, and secure. Top brands globally rely on Akamai to help them realize competitive advantage through agile solutions that extend the power of their multi-cloud architectures. Akamai keeps decisions, apps, and experiences closer to users than anyone — and attacks and threats far away. Akamai’s portfolio of edge security, web and mobile performance, enterprise access, and video delivery solutions is supported by unmatched customer service, analytics, and 24/7/365 monitoring. To learn why the world’s top brands trust Akamai, visit www.akamai.com, blogs.akamai.com, or @Akamai on Twitter. You can find our global contact information at www.akamai.com/locations. Published 09/18.